Author: Cath Barton

Cath Barton is an English writer who lives in South Wales. In June 2017 she was awarded the New Welsh Writing AmeriCymru Prize for the Novella, and her novella The Plankton Collector was published by New Welsh Review in September 2018. Her second novella, In the Sweep of the Bay, will be published by Louise Walters books in September 2020. A collection of short stories, The Garden of Earthly Delights, inspired by the work of the artist Hieronymus Bosch, will be published by Retreat West in early 2021. Also active in the on-line community of writers of flash fiction, Cath is a regular contributor to the on-line critical hub for Welsh arts and culture, Wales Arts Review.

There are so many writing websites out there. I’m listing three of my favourites – not just because they’ve published my work, but also because they have a lot of excellent stories by other writers too, and the people who run and edit them are responsive and generous.

The Lonely Crowd invited me to contribute to their Books of the Year feature. Here’s what I wrote:

I’ve very much enjoyed some of this year’s Big books: Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport demonstrates how the full stop might actually be getting in the way of the energy of many a story, Ali Smith’s Spring examines frankly the awfulness of our times and conjures heart-rending tenderness in spite of it, while Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Othercelebrates Black British women with a vitality and rhythm that is all her own.

But the book which stands out for me in what I’ve read in 2019, over and above these giants of the literary world, is Adèle by the French-Moroccan author Leïla Slimani, the 2019 English translation of her first novel, originally published in French in 2014 as Dans le jardin de l’ogre. I devoured this one afternoon back in March and it locked onto something in me. As an exploration of a woman’s search for meaning in her life this is – in my opinion – peerless. If once or twice Sam Taylor’s translation juddered, for the most part it was crystalline. Do not think this novel is about a sex addiction; it is about a quest for authentic feeling. Adèle is a 21st century Emma Bovary, and Leïla Slimani’s book deserves to be read as widely and remembered as long as Gustave Flaubert’s.

My top TV in 2019 (bear in mind there was lots and lots I didn’t see!) is:

Fleabag, Season 2 – Phobe Waller-Bridge is unique, Andrew Scott was wonderful as the priest, and everyone else was fab. Great story, even better acting. I loved it.

Years and Years – pitch-perfect writing about the (very) near future by Russell T Davies. Very bleak. very important.

Seven Worlds, One Planet – extraordinary filming. By turns poignant, awe-inspiring and heart-rending. And with a wonderfully humorous look at the grave-robbing hamsters of Vienna. And the one and only David Attenborough.

This is a little story which I started in Italy in May, in the wonderful flash fiction course with Kathy Fish, Nancy Stohlman and a bunch of other talented writers. Here’s the beautiful soundtrack which inspired it and from which it takes its title:

Underneath the Stars

Cath Barton

He still looks for her at the tail end of the day, our old grey cat, Merlin. Sitting at the top of the steps, outside our front door. Watching the bend in the road. Watching and waiting for her battered old Ford Fiesta to appear round the bend, her tooting and waving to tell us she’s home and calling out to me to put the kettle on because:

‘I’m dying for a cup of tea!’

That was Marie-Louise. She was greedy for life.

She brought cakes, always a little sweet something. But now the days of our feasting are done and it’s quiet day and night in Silverdale, in the quicksilver light of the moon and the rarely-now-golden light of the sun.

For they closed the road off.

Marie-Louise would not have wanted that, would have insisted that the va-et-vient should continue. For she loved the rush and fall of things.

Merlin’s still sitting looking, still hopeful, as the silvery sheen of his coat merges into the dusk. I call him and we go together into the back garden. We sit by side, noses twitching to catch the sinuous waft of night scents as, above us, the map of the heavens unrolls. There’s the whoosh of a train down in the cutting but Merlin doesn’t stir.

I point. ‘She’s up there,’ I whisper in his ear.

It’s a blind hope. I can’t read the night sky any more than I could read her mind or understand her crazy impulses.

Merlin’s ears prick now and he darts after some little creature invisible to me in the fading light. Something snuffles near the railway tracks. A fox maybe, or a badger. I call Merlin back from danger. He comes and he sits, quietly, close by me. And I nuzzle his soft back.

NEWS! I’m going to include this story in a collection of short fiction and photographs which I’m putting together with my husband and fellow writer, Oliver Barton. It’s called Candyfloss III. Yes, it’s the third in a series, though there’s been a bit of a gap since the last one. You can still buy Candyfloss II here.

We hope to have Candyfloss III out in January. All profits will go to local charities where we live in Abergavenny. And it will be available to buy directly from us. You’ll hear about it here first.